​Winter arrived in July with the seventh-season premiere of Game Of Thrones, but there’s nothing cold about the HBO series’ viewership. Coming back from the longest hiatus in its history, the drama nabbed a series high showing for a first-run telecast with an average 10.1 million viewers.

​Telling of how TV is consumed today, the opener pulled in another 6 million viewers on same-day DVR playback and streaming via HBO Go and HBO Now.

​The total represents an incredible 50 percent increase from last year’s premiere, when the show premiered in the spring when TV viewership is typically higher than the summer. That also makes the episode the most-watched season premiere for any HBO series to date. The Season 7 premiere also saw the highest number of concurrent viewers across the streaming services HBO Go and HBO Now.

​The episode has also become the show’s most-tweeted episode of all time, garnering more than 2.4 million tweets.